Siemens, Nokia Helped Provide Iran's Censoring Tech 280
An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal has an article about Nokia and Siemens selling the censoring technology to Iran's government. Do you believe that the public relations damage to these companies can persuade them from selling this kind of technology to other dictatorial regimes?" I don't believe there will *be* any PR Damage, and that makes me a little sad.
Let Their Big Friend in the Sky Help Them (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone who professes to that an imaginary being is responsible for everything is insane and doesn't deserve any benefit of science. Jonas Salk, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Edison, Galileo Galilei, and the other great minds have saved more souls and advanced humanity further than any Mullah, Pastor, or Priest of any faith. The Mad Mullahs of Iran don't deserve cell phones or any other bit of technology.
Yeah, it's a rant, but I'm just tired of religious nut jobs of any type forcing their superstitions on anyone else.
Re:More propaganda (Score:2, Interesting)
It sounds like a beat up to me.
Alright! It's a good ole fashion Beatles burning! Everyone pour out into the streets with your wireless routers, modems and network cards. I'll bring the gasoline and matches! Remember not to inhale the smoke from the blue and green flames on that burning plastic. After that, we storm our local ISPs and demand all their networking gear for the same fate!
Did you know that this hardware can also be used to transmit and receive kiddie porn? I'm shocked we didn't take action long ago, it should be condemned just like any person that would send or transmit such foul material!
With coordinated strikes, the internet shall be pure and whole once again and your homes will be safe!
Like the Nazis (Score:5, Interesting)
It just occured to me that I Godwin'd this story already, but this is just like when IBM sold adding machines to the Nazis to help them tabulate Holocaust victims.
Way I see it, who cares? The corner store selling smokes isn't to blame for the lung cancer - ultimately the smoker is. Except it's even more generic than that.
- Siemens sold network technology to Iran - the same you'd use for all sorts of network admin - and they used it to censor. That's Iran's bad.
- IBM sold adding machines - they'll count anything - and the Nazis used them to count Jews (and others). That's the Nazi's bad.
In short, don't blame the maker for the use of the tool.
Re:Surprise surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let Their Big Friend in the Sky Help Them (Score:2, Interesting)
Marin Mersenne [wikipedia.org]
Gregor Mendel [wikipedia.org]
Julius Nieuwland [wikipedia.org]
Georges Lemaitre [wikipedia.org]
You fanatic atheists are just as bad, if not worse, than fanatic religious believers. Your baseless hatred and uninformed blunders don't lend you a lot of credibility, you know?
True scientists are open minded. Fortunately for the world, both the people you mentioned and the people I mentioned were not like you.
Re:More propaganda (Score:3, Interesting)
Party Talk (Score:5, Interesting)
"...so, what do you do?"
"I sell net censoring software."
"Really? Who buys that stuff?"
"Oh, lots of people. We have ISP customers from around the world."
"What do they use it for?"
"You know, censoring kiddie porn sites, blocking mail spammers, and so on." ...
I think that's a pretty good description of what this is about. People are selling tools. The problem is how those tools are used. There are evil shit-heads all over the world. That does not mean the tools themselves are evil.
Technology? It was a class of service change! (Score:1, Interesting)
There is nothing special about what they did... It was a class of service change for non government services, pure and simple... any PBX and a good administrator can block, downgrade or restrict outgoing calls per user or by class of service (you know, the restriction class for In-house, local and long distance service...) They just restricted everyone to local calls...
Re:Remember South African apartheid? (Score:5, Interesting)
The South African ruling classes valued their place in the western world and it hurt them to lose that relationship. I'm not sure the same can be said of Iran, I think a large proportion of them would be quite happy to have the west as an enemy they can blame for their woes, there is no good relationship to be lost, only the ability to make everyday Iranians poorer.
As far as Nokia and Siemens goes I think it's also worth thinking about how their technology is also empowering everyday Iranians. No doubt some of the footage and messages being passed around in recent days comes from Nokia/Siemens equipment. I'd bet their overall effect is a net benefit in terms of freedom so asking them to avoid selling anything to the country would be a mistake.
Information technology will empower the Iranian people no matter how many barriers the Iranian government may hope to put up more and more stuff will leak through. I agree that we should pressure companies to stay clear of ethically dubious things the government there does but avoiding the country entirely would be a mistake.
Re:Like the Nazis (Score:4, Interesting)
So is there any evidence of election rigging yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly so far I just see this as a knee-jerk reaction in the west sympathising with the disgruntled minority voters because clearly 'Iranians would never vote for that evil, west-hating dictator, so it must have been rigged'.
One thing I DID hear through some media analyses is that up until a few months ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the favourite to get elected, then he made some fumbles, made some comments, and his standing in THE ELECTION POLLS significantly reduced, and the opposition got giddy. Well that can either be a realistic reflection of the voters intentions, or it could just be a backlash that gets put to the side when it comes to making the final and long-term decision in the voting box.
So, is there any evidence of election rigging yet?
PS, I'm not apologising for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, just that suggesting that, maybe, he is popularly supported. I know that when I watched a recent doco about Iran I was surprised that their society was much more modern and free than I felt that I had been led to believe.
PPS I'm not saying it wasn't rigged either, just that in the large amount of media I have seen on it, it is all about rallys and protest, not of massive vote rigging, feel free to point out something concrete on the contrary.
Re:Nokia aren't doing anything wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
There's an ocean of difference between selling a product on an open market, and selling a product directly to a dictatorship when you know it's going to be used to suppress the populace. This is known as "unethical behavior," something corporations and the Pentagon know nothing about. It requires a person or a group of people to have a real set of values that they don't violate on a regular basis for power or profit.
Often these things come back to bite one in the ass [casi.org.uk]:
As late as July, 1990, one month before Iraqi troops stormed into Kuwait city, officials at the National Security Council and the State Department were pushing to deliver the second installment of the $1 billion in loan guarantees, despite the looming crisis in the region and evidence that Iraq had used the aid illegally to help finance a secret arms procurement network to obtain technology for its nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile program.
Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1992
Re:Hell NO! They'll Probably Use As A Selling Poin (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it to be expected that the world's largest provider of cellular phones is better at providing connectivity devices than censorship devices?? At some point, some executives decided that a communications device with degraded service is better than no communications device at all. When you consider the utility of a cellular device, then subtract the censorship laws, you still are better off than when you started. We should be praising Nokia in particular for working around the laws of Iran and providing the Iranian people with the best tools available.
That aside, did anyone notice that the article chose to point fingers at two European companies? This would be a fine piece for brewing American distrust of Europe. I'm not so sure that was unintentional, given the messenger? Who owns the WSJ again ?? =)
Re:Surprise surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Thats because western media are showing a very biased story of the Iran issues. Were the western reporters and observers able to see any solid evidence of rigging the election ? I doubt. The reason Nejad won the election with such a huge margin is because of his popularity among rural mass. The so called "reformist's" influence is confined to Tehran and surrounding areas only.
Catch up to today's events. The Guardian Council has had to admit that in 50 cities there were more votes cast than people eligible to vote. Other sources say the figure may be as high as 120 cities and 110% of the total electorate.
All to elect a puppet. Yes, a puppet. The power remains with the clerics, they decide who are acceptable candidates after making it quite clear what boundaries are acceptable for those seeking the position.